Is Broad, either North or South, and avenue or a street? Broad is a street that has it both ways. No one knows for sure. To some people it is one thing. To other people, it is another. Even the city doesn’t know what is what when it comes to Broad. 50% of zoning statutes refer to Broad as Broad Street. The other half refer to it as Broad Avenue. Tomato/tomato. All that really matters is if you are on North Broad or South Broad.
Broad Street is not particularly broad, except where the pumping stations are in the neutral ground. It is either three or two lanes in either direction, depending on what stretch you are on. There is nothing particular about Broad Street. Nobody gets all excited about going to Broad. There is a small Whole Foods Market.
There is also a Dollar General. And, there is a Family Dollar, a supermarket that used to be a Rite Aid but is now a supermarket that sells Central American groceries, and a courthouse. OURS IS A NATION OF LAW NOT MEN, is what is carved over the South Broad Street entrance.
What’s in a name? What is the difference between an avenue and a street? In New York City, avenues run north-south and streets run east-west. New Orleans operates under a different rhyme and reason. The streets are governed by the Mississippi’s curve. We live in a crescent city. Rights-of-way are named what they are because they have always been that way.
Crescent City Steaks is on North Broad Avenue. Broad used to be known as Steak House Row. The original Ruth’s Chris Steak House was on the downtown riverside corner at the intersection of Broad and Ursulines Avenue. Ursulines is a Street from the river to North Claiborne Avenue. Ursulines is an Avenue from Claiborne to Bayou St. John. It both begins and ends at water.
Ruth’s Chris Steak House got its start in New Orleans and kept headquartered here until Katrina. After Katrina, the company moved its corporate offices to Orlando Florida. Ruth Fertel had already been dead for years by then. The Ruth’s Chris remaining in New Orleans is on Fulton Street. The only people who eat at a Ruth’s Chris Steak House is an unimaginative tourist or a suburbanite, or both.
McHardy’s Chicken and Fixin’s is on North Broad. It is one of the points that define the Fried Chicken Triangle. Ask Guy Fieri. Any fried chicken past McHardy’s is suspect. It may be good, but, outside the Triangle, any other fried chicken is no better than good enough.
This is New Orleans. When you have had the best, why try the rest? This is why people live and die here from cradle to grave.
We call graves ovens in New Orleans. After a year and a day a body cooks down to nothing. There is plenty of room for a fresh corpse.
There are plenty of things to say about Broad. Those are stories for another day, alas. Shugee just showed up. He’s got some news from the New Orleans grapevine. I gotta go.
-K.